Chapter Eighteen #3
“I only ask,” Miss Applegate said, “because my brother is being so very pushy about it. He’d quite like to have a duke in the family, even if it’s only through a younger brother.
Albert is the best of brothers, and he truly means well, but I do wish he wouldn’t parade me about like a prize sow on market day. ”
A tiny flutter of laughter escaped through the cage of Kate’s fingers before she could smother it.
“I’m so sorry,” she said. “It isn’t funny, truly.
But I swear to you I have had the same thought in passing.
” And so had Elliot, in point of fact, having compared himself to a slab of meat hung within a butcher’s window.
Though Kate hadn’t been one of the marriageable young women on display, still it had seemed rather cold and calculating a thing to endure.
The marriage mart, upon which men selected young women of breeding and quality to take to wife with little difference—at least, from what Kate had been able to discern—from how they might select a horse.
“Yes, well, one day I hope I too shall be able to laugh about it,” Miss Applegate sighed. “Though, between the combined efforts of my mother and brother, I suppose I shall not be on the marriage mart much longer.”
“If you will be good enough not to take offense to an unsolicited opinion,” Kate ventured, “I’d say it matters much more what you have got to say of it.”
Miss Applegate’s lovely green eyes brightened with mischief. “Are you fishing, Kate?” she teased with a delighted little smile. And then her eyes widened, her lips parting on a sudden, indrawn breath, as if a thought had just occurred. “Have I got a page there in your notebook?”
Taken aback, Kate could only mumble, “Oh—well—you see—”
“I have, haven’t I? Oh, you must let me see it.” Miss Applegate reached out to touch Kate’s arm in appeal. “Please? Just one tiny little peek, and I promise I shall never tell anyone, not one single soul.”
“I have got rather a lot of notes,” Kate said uneasily. “About rather a lot of ladies.”
“I shall only look at mine,” Miss Applegate declared, laying one hand over her heart as if to swear upon it. “Oh, please.”
The woman was tenacious, like a dog with a bone.
Would a firm refusal put even a dent in that stubborn insistence?
Even as she vacillated, Kate had to admit that there was every chance they might end up spending a good deal of time in each other’s company, if Elliot did happen to marry the woman.
Perhaps it was best simply to let her have a look, in the interests of fostering a friendly acquaintance.
Kate pried at the strings of her reticule, trying to recall exactly what she had written.
Surely nothing offensive—she had, after all, found herself annoyed most of all by the simple fact that the woman was simply too bloody likeable.
That as much as she had wanted to find a flaw worthy of excoriating opinion, she had failed to latch on to a single one worthy of note.
Until now. She flipped through pages, scanning the names scrawled in pencil upon them until at last she came to the pages emblazoned with Miss Applegate’s name.
“I think it only fair to warn you,” she said as she handed the notebook over, “I will be adding doggedly persistent the moment you return it to me.”
Miss Applegate gave another delighted trill of laughter that sounded so musical, light and airy. “I won’t even complain of it,” she said. “Now let’s see here—oh! Fine eyes, I see you’ve put down. I thank you; I do think they’re my best feature overall.”
Her best feature might be debatable, but there was no denying that her eyes were particularly lovely. Large and green and almond-shaped with just the slightest catlike tilt to the corners, and thickly-fringed with long, dark lashes.
“Very pretty,” Miss Applegate read, with some measure of satisfaction.
“I’m quite flattered. One doesn’t wish to be considered vain, of course, but for the lengths to which we must go to be considered presentable, one would like to be considered to be pretty, no?
” She drew her finger down the page to the next bit which caught her interest. “Likes dogs and children. Is that terribly important, do you think?”
“Elliot likes dogs and children,” Kate muttered, clasping her hands before her. “So it is important to him, I suppose.”
“Perhaps I shall make that a requirement for my own husband-hunting,” Miss Applegate mused.
“Certainly I should like better a man who has dogs for companionship rather than hunting. My dog, Captain, has grown accustomed to sharing the bed with me and I fear I could not tolerate a husband who would see him banished from it.”
“I don’t believe Elliot would ever,” Kate said.
“Well, that is something to recommend him, then,” Miss Applegate said, and true to her word, she closed the notebook without turning the page, leaving the rest of its contents unread.
“You think we would suit one another, then,” she said as she handed the notebook back to Kate.
“Lord Elliot and myself, that is to say.”
Kate hurriedly shoved the notebook back into her reticule. “You would suit,” she managed to force herself to say. “From everything I have observed, you would suit one another enormously.”
“I wonder,” Miss Applegate said, her brows drawn into a pensive expression.
“He is a fine dancer,” she admitted. “And a jovial sort, which I quite like. There is an appalling lack of wittiness in the Ton, which makes many gatherings dreadfully dull. And one must admit that he is…really quite handsome.”
Yes. He was. It was that single dimple which saved his face from being entirely too boyish, spared him from an excess of symmetry which might have made him appear more statue than man.
It was that grin which so often graced his face that told observers of his good humor and pleasant disposition.
Even the curl of his overlong locks about his collar gave him an air of one who took neither himself—nor the world as a whole—too seriously.
He was fashionable without being ostentatious; affable in a way that won him friends easily. He was charming, personable, and most of all, kind. Exactly the sort of man any woman would want for a husband.
What woman would not fall in love with him, given half a chance?